The new book reading initiative

Well, okay. I got a few pages into Foucault’s Pendulum yesterday but then I kind of dozed off. And then Jony came over to show me this new Aston Martin that he just picked up and then he stayed for a beer and dinner and then the Oscars were on and somehow the day just slipped away from me.

Key thing is that Jony says he totally empathizes with my situation on the book reading thing. Same thing happens to him, apparently, in his old art school circles. He says unless you’re like starving in an apartment someplace making weird art that nobody buys, then you’re totally shunned by the artsy crowd. God forbid you should go work in industry and actually make money — do that and you’re instantly branded a philistine. Which is weird, Jony says, because honestly San Francisco and the Bay Area are like the most intellectually alive and cosmopolitan places in the whole world. London, Paris, New York — they get all the attention but honestly the Bay Area is so much more intellectually alive but people don’t take it seriously because of the good weather.

“You know where else is cool,” Jony says. “Barcelona. A lot like here, actually.”

I was like, Yeah, um, that’s in the south of Spain, right?

He says, “No, it’s in the north.”

I’m like, “Yeah, right. Barcelona, right. Very cool. Yeah. Very intellectual.”

Then we started talking about that really famous restaurant near Barcelona, this place called El Bulli where the food is like a work of art and you have to wait like a year to get reservations and somehow Jony managed to get a table in April and he wants me to go and I was like yeah that sounds so amazing and I really don’t get why people think we’re a bunch of spoiled vapid non-reading people out here because see we do so many really cool artistic things like flying my Gulfstream halfway around the world to get dinner.

I tried to read a little more of FP before bed but I ended up checking email instead. Tonight, I swear, I’m going to get at it. I’ve cleared some free time on iCal and will devote it to reading the book. I mean it.